i do not want to disrupt that. it's a matter of letting the technology and experts and engineers, try and see what's possible. >> okay. all right. let's hear some thank yous for these two commissioners. thank you very much. for doing this, and for all your hard work over the many years on unlicensed. so, i'm going to turn it over briefly to my colleague sarah morris who is the senior policy counsel here for new america's open technology group and she's the moderator today. >> really, i'm just going to turn it back to michael in a second. i want to thank commissioners

rosenworcel and o' rielly for their remarks. we're going to begin with a presentation from michael calabrese director of new america. author of the report titled spectrum silos to gigabyte wi-fi, sharing the gigahertz car bands. there's copies on the table as you came in. there's also an electronic version available on our website. then after michael's presentation, we'll be joined by a great panel to continue today's discussion. and with that, i will pass the mike back to michael to talk about the paper. >> okay. yeah, as the first panelist but the only one using power point, i'll summarize the report and then we'll have the panel come up. so, much like you've heard from the two commissioners for oti, the 5 gigahertz frequency band

represents a unique opportunity to achieve super fast giga wi-fi connectivity. to give you an idea of why this is so important, it was just a couple years ago that the fcc's national broad band came out the chairman warned of a looming spectrum crisis. yet each year since then, consumer demand for mobile data has increased an average of 60%, each year. year over year. and what happened to the crisis? well, the main reason that -- that we are still all enjoying tons of data, more and more each year. more than two-thirds of americans have smartphones is that 60 to 80 -- and i should advance this -- 60 -- between 60% and 80% of all mobile data traffic is now being carried over wi-fi and not cellular

networks. so wi-fi is also generating over $200 billion in economic value. but there are two obstacles to america's surging wi-fi economy. one is that the unlicensed bands, particularly the 2.4 band and others are becoming congested in busy areas. but on top of that, is that wi-fi channels at 20 megahertz are not wide enough to accommodate many users on high bandwidth apps. particularly video, interactive video, chat, streaming. we need more channels. wider channels. and some of the benefits of having channels that are 4 or even 8 times larger in the band include gigabyte data rates which would more than boost

capacity for consumers, enhanced performance for video under battery use, improved hot spot coverage because you have, of course, more data capacity in a given area. so, this is the current -- just shows the current and potential wi-fi channels in 5 -- across the whole 5 gigahertz band, based on the fcc's 2013 proposed rule making. and if you look on the far right, in green, those are the additional wide wi-fi channels for the 802.11 ac standard that could potentially be added if the 5.9 gigahertz band is shared.

so, just as a bit of background, back in 1999, the fcc allocated that 75 megahertz at the top of the 5 gigahertz band from 5850 to 5925. on the primary basis for intelligent transportation systems. this led to a set of wireless technologies, the auto industry is developing and testing for future vehicle-to-vehicle safety signaling. as well as possibly vehicle-to-infrastructure communication as well. the its band is channelized for auto industry use of a specialized 802.11 standards. 802.11p known as dedicated short-range, dsrc, if you need to decode the acronym you've heard several times. this is kind of a schematic, of

what it looks like in a car, the components. today, the focus of dsrc tack is very narrow band vehicle-to-vehicle, v-to-v, and warn of impending drivers and therefore avoid an accident before they occur. which represents in concept a huge shift from the past half century where we worried just about mitigating the damage from accidents, rather than actually avoiding them. the national highway traffic safety association, nhtsa, has tentatively concluded that it should mandate dsrc radio systems in all new vehicles sold after 2020, depending on when they would adopt this. however, as you've heard from the commissioners, more than 15 years have gone by since the band was first allocated. and we still really have no

deployments, just testing. this led the fcc to propose in its 2013 rule making that the band should be shared if technically feasible with very low-powering licensed devices. and especially for the purpose of gigabit wi-fi. now, as policymakers consider sharing, there's really very important considerations that we emphasize and explain in the report. first, there's a critical distinction between dsrc safety of life applications, particularly those that are going to involve realtime, vehicle-to-vehicle signaling. because that basic safety message that says where each car is communicating to the other. i'm here, i'm heading this way, i'm going the speed. that -- nhtsa is requiring that that all needs to be on one 10 megahertz channel. a distinction between that and

nonsafety and nonrealtime information applications. second, there is a growing number of driver-assist crash avoidance technologies that are ready now and rapidly improving. so, if any of you have -- as i do, a volvo sedan, for example, that has, you know, lasers calls lidar. on board sensors, as these continue to develop, driverless cars are coming. in addition, as nhtsa in its advance notice of rule making on a mandate, full says adoption of dsrc could take 20 to 30 years because it's really not fully effective unless everybody has it. and what's interesting about

driver assist technologies which i'm not going to go into kind of further here for time, we described them a lot in the report. but they actually make each car and the road safer each car that adopts it. because if your car is safer with radar, lidar cameras and so on, that helps everybody even before there's massive uptake. so, on the first point, most nonsafety applications are already available or can be via general purpose wireless networks. so 15 years ago, when the fcc allocated this band to the auto industry, that is, you know, really before mobile networks were pervasive, and before wi-fi had boomed, it sounded cutting edge to envision connected cars delivering information and services to drivers.

so, the industry proposed that, you know, we could do things like turn by turn directions. traffic and weather alerts. wireless payments for parking. or to have find a parking place. or display ads from roadside vendors. well, as you know, today most cars are already connected. but that connectivity is provided by general purpose cellular and wi-fi networks that power an innovative and rapidly evolving ecosystem of crowd-based applications. and if you don't recognize that screen, that's waze, a competitor to google maps which crowd-sources all kinds of traffic conditions to route you around construction or whatever. these nonsafety, or these

informational applications some of which are safety related but they're not realtime, are being used now on smartphones and tablets. and increasingly cars themselves are becoming smart. as i think commissioner rosenworcel mentioned and it's in today's "washington post," these apps have been built into the dashboards of an increasingly large number of cars. so, it's not even a case of juggling your cell phone or tablet. they would just be integrated. connectivity, and these applications integrated into your car over the next five years. in fact, long before dsrc has deployed its scale, our cars will be rolling smartphones and connected directly to the internet and to cloud-based data in a way to dsrc is designed not to be. the only way for dsrc which is a short-range stand alone wireless communication to connect to crowd-based data and the internet would be if there's a very pervasive system of

roadside units to communicate with them, also using dsrc, something that local, state, county, municipal jurisdictions seem fairly unlikely. and this was a conclusion of the gao government accounting office, recently, to be implementing anytime soon, given a tremendous cost and physical situation of these jurisdictions. i just want to know -- quickly, that this is not a question of global harmonization. in the european union, the european union concluded actually that 20 megahertz, two channels are sufficient for time critical safety applications using dsrc. and that a third channel could be authorized for nontime critical. but safety-related dsrc. so about 30 megahertz.

japan is using entirely different frequencies for what they're doing which is mainly about roadside units. doing things that we already do with unlicensed which is toll collecting, easy toll. has been on the road frequency unlicensed bands, of course, for many years. so, there are two competing proposals. and i don't want to get into any detail since we have mary brown from cisco and dean brenner from qualcomm here. but qualcomm, as you've been hearing has proposed to that we should segment the 5.9 gigahertz band. that is 30 megahertz of the 75 could be at the stop and reserved for this v-to-v or realtime safety signaling, as well as for first responders and, you know, especially like the european arrangement. and then if those are moved to

the top of the band, wi-fi can share two 20 megahertz channels at the bottom with dsrc nonsafety or nonrealtime applications. cisco, for its part also has a sharing proposal, but it's based on detect and avoid dsrc across the entire 75 megahertz of the band, as well as the top 25 megahertz of the adjacent unlicensed band. in other words, wi-fi, for example, would need to detect if there's any dsrc transmit on any of the seven dsrc channels in the 75 megahertz. and if any -- and if the transmission is detected, clear off the entire 100 megahertz for some period of time. it was initially ten seconds i think that might be different now. our concern is that if the nhtsa mandate makes v-to-v it could be more than just a second.

this is just a picture of the qualcomm proposal tole reband with three channels at the top. either two or three, they say. that would be dedicated exclusively for dsrc. so, there would be no concern, at least in theory about interference from wi-fi. so, to conclude, let me just tell you what our policy recommendations were in the report, actually very similar to what commissioner rosenworcel said in some ways that first the fcc should release a public notice by march 31st, with a process and time line. a time line is very important.

i don't know if julie knapp is still here. the head of the office of engineering. time line, as the commissioner said, you know, there's going to be, there's always a big disruption in the regulatory agency when there's a change of administration, a new chairman. and if we don't get this done this year, who knows how long it will take. and then second if both the cisco and qualcomm proposals are technically feasible, we suggest that the administration and the fcc should conclude that segmenting the band strikes a better balance between the public interest in auto safety on the one hand, and fast, affordable mobile broad band on the other. and i should note, because this is -- you know, newsworthy in this context, that on friday, a joint letter was sent to senate commerce chairman john boone

from the three federal agencies from the fcc, department of transportation and commerce department that promise to begin joint testing. the fcc, and i didn't know this until yesterday, so, it didn't change our recommendations. but the fcc has proposed to issue a public notice to refresh the record, hopefully, that will be very soon. and then there will be a three-phase test plan, beginning with the testing of prototype unlicensed devices at the fcc labs. and proceeding, we hope, to field testing to ensure interferences is avoided in real world scenarios. as this proceeds, we'll be advising, the white house in particular caught in the middle here to continue to move away from side roads of special spectrum and towards more general purpose allocations. the fcc national broadband plan reiterated that exceptions made for public safety, such as

v-to-v signaling should be narrowly defined for what is necessary to achieve compelling public safety objectives. so, in sum, we believe that extending unlicensed sharing into the lower portion of the 5.9 band while protecting realtime safety apps on three dedicated channels at the top is a win-win solution that promotes the public interest in both auto safety and fast affordable mobile connectivity. thank you. [ applause ] >> thank you, michael. at this time, we'll welcome the rest of the panelists to come and take a seat along with michael, once you've taken a sip of water. i'll introduce them. today, we have dean brenner, senior vice president of government affairs for qualcomm.

we have mary brown senior director of government affairs for cisco. we have bill maguire, campaign manager for wififorward. harold feld, senior vice president for public knowledge. blair anderson, deputy administrator for the national highway safety administration. and of course, michael. so, we're going to start with dean, and each of the remaining panelists will go about five minutes remarks. >> okay. thanks very much. i promise i will stick to the five minutes. so, i guess if i had to have a theme this morning, it would be that to use a phrase that i'm quite confident we'll hear tonight since today is the state of the union address. so far, it shows that the state of the union address, this shows the state of the union is strong. so, i'd like to see a bipartisan duo of two fcc commissioners working together. it should not be partisan.

there should not be a republican view or democrat view with the 5.9 gigahertz band, those are largely technical issues it's great that the two commissioners have shown sustained interest in this. it's great to see michael delving into the chilly technical waters doing so well on the report. finally, i think my family won't believe there's so many people that came to this session on 5.9 gigahertz. i'll have to take a selfie and put the audience behind me. so, qualcomm, we have two interests here. so, qualcomm is the world's largest manufacturer of chips for mobile devices, smartphones, tablets and the like, if you're not familiar with us. so, we sell hundreds of millions of chips each year. and hundreds of millions of those chips have wi-fi in them. we're leaders in developing the next generation of wi-fi. so we're driving better versions of wi-fi absolutely as quickly

as possible. as a company, we're absolutely dedicated to better, faster, mobile broadband, ubiquitously even in the hills of pennsylvania. that's on the one hand. on the other hand, we really do view the car as a smart car on wheels today. we're working very closely with the car industry. and we were one of the early developers of dsrc. so, when this issue first arose, we were dedicated, no pun intended there, to both accommodating wi-fi, because we know everyone wants better, faster wi-fi, "a." but, "b," to do so in a way that absolutely supported the rapid proliferation of dsrc where absolutely proponents of dsrc wouldn't be a part of anything that was trying to hamper it or interfere with it or hurt it in any way.

so, those two interest, really good genesis of our proposal. our proposal is if you looked at michael's chart where they have the spectrum, the upper 30 megahertz will never be used for wi-fi. that's because if you do the channelization, the upper 30 megahertz in this band is never go to be part of a 40, 80, 160 megahertz channel. that upper 30 is like a reminder, to borrow an analogy. our idea is you put the 30 dsrc exclusively, would not be shared. they would have that spectrum to dsrc to themselves. that would be ample, because dsrc has michael indicate said using a 10 megahertz channel. there's another benefit to putting dsrc in michael's band, it abuts portion of the band one

of the most heavily used for wi-fi. so the safety channel should be as far away from the core wi-fi channel, so that we are protecting against interference. and then in the lower 45 megahertz, we would advocate that that is shared, we have some ideas about the best way to do that. one of them is, getting a little nerdy here. dsrc has a 10 megahertz and dsrc would use 20 megahertz and match up with wi-fi and detect and avoid would be much easier. in a nutshell, thank you all for coming. thank you for the commissioners who already spoke in the interest in the issue. i'm heartened to hear about the letter to the hill. and we look forward to working with everyone to reach a compromise that both supports the rapid proliferation of dsrc, but also provides much needed additional spectrum for wi-fi.

thanks. >> thank you, dean. and now, we'll hear from mary brown about the cisco proposal. >> thank you for having me. i really appreciated the comments of the commissioners and michael on his report. cisco is a san jose-based maker of wi-fi. one of the largest makers of wi-fi in the world. i want to say at the outset, cleared spectrum is much easier to work with from the perspective of a radio manufacturer. there are fewer technical constraints. the technology is easier to develop. it's easier to commercialize. in the absence of having to share spectrum with someone else is a boon. right. everything functions as you designed it and you don't have to worry about that other spectrum interfering with you, right? we often hear in the licensed

world, service providers requesting cleared spectrum. there's a reason for this. it's the same thing in the unlicensed world. now, if the qualcomm plan -- if the plan to essentially place the lower 40 megahertz of this spectrum and the service of wi-fi were to become true, then it is absolutely true, according to the comments we all heard earlier today that we would see tremendous economic benefits to pushing wi-fi into the first 40 megahertz of this band. we'd see productivity benefits accruing to users in the economy. we'd see competitive benefits in that there would be more outdoor wireless coverage for people to use. we'd have tremendous demand, management benefits like commissioner rosenworcel talked about. and the product team would be tickled pink because it would be a much, much easier thing to accomplish. so, why then don't we simply revise these rules and push the

transportation uses to the top end of the 75 megahertz and let the lower 40 be the domain of wi-fi? what is the impediment that keeps us from doing that? and the answer is human lives. right? 32,000 people died on u.s. roads last year. it's hard to think about that in the abstract. so, i did some math based on the size of a 747 fully loaded. that's more than 64 747s crashing with everybody aboard dying, more than four a month. that's a lot of people. let's suppose that semiautonomous economies reduces that. it's say it reduces it by half. we get down to 16,000 people.

so 16,000 people are dying five years from now in the absence of dsrc with the semi autonomous. now, we're down to 32 747s crashing every year. but v-to-v technology alone. this is hard data from drt, from ten years of studying this says they can avoid crash avoidance 80%. so we can save all about 6,500 people. right? so what do you as a policymaker do? i'm not a policymaker. i work for a vehicle manufacturing company, right? do you move a v-to-v safety channel to the top end of the spectrum as dean has outlined. well, the problem is d.o.t. has been studying that ten years in that position. now you've got other

interference issues. it's all going to have to be restudied again. and probably going to set the dsrc program back some number of years. so it's going to go even slower, all right. you've got to know what you're getting into, you could call out the economists which nobody has done, interestingly enough. you could highlight all the benefits of expanding wi-fi. there have been reports. cisco has written some of them to the fcc about all the benefits of wi-fi. you could get to the numbers and look at the actuarial tables and figure out the value of lives lost. and you could have a simple black and white answer. what's the best interest of the united states? what is going to serve the american public the most. and it can come down to dollars and cents. but here's what we think. we don't think policymakers pull the plug on dsrc. we've concluded that this technology and the echo system supporting it is pretty much

going to stay as proposed as implemented today so we humbly come to this debate and say, if that is true if our conclusion is true, then is there any way for to us share when dsrc is not using that spectrum? because there's going to be spectrum sitting there laying shallow. so is there a way to use it when dsrc is not using it. so, our proposal is a detect and avoid proposal. it turns out that dsrc is basically a cousin of .0211 ac which is the technology. we can listen to the preamble of the dsrc communications. we can detect it so instantaneously, that we can leave that channel before barer content, before the basic safety message of those talking to each

other can arrive. we don't interfere with that warning dumbing to the driver to tell them of the danger ahead. and to take an action, right. that's how fast we think this can happen. and we think we can -- we can also further protect the vehicle-to-vehicle basic message service, sitting at the lower end of the band, by also removing wi-fi from the adjacent spectrum, because the vehicle-to-vehicle is actually a very low-lower radio whisper. the cars are whispering to each other. and by taking the adjacent transmissions down and getting them away, vehicle-to-vehicle can actually function better than what it's been designed to do. so, we think that is the likely outcome. but we have no technology religion about this.

and if dean's idea ultimately prevails at the end of the day, we will be right there making wi-fi along with everybody else. but we don't think it's going to happen. that's -- that concludes my remarks. >> thanks, mary. following mary, we'll hear from bill maguire who is the campaign manager for wififorward. >> thank you for being here, i am here on behalf of wi-fiforward, we're a broad coalition of wi-fi providers and users. so, we represent technology companies like broadcom. google and other networks. we represent communications providers like comcast and wireless service providers. and we represent wi-fi users including the american library association, and of course, consumer groups we're very pleased in ati and public

knowledge which we'll hear from next, both members of wififorward. so we're very encouraged with what we hear today. we don't have a particular proposal that we favor. but our general mission is to make sure that there's an increased awareness. and it doesn't sound like there needs to be awareness increased here. but general awareness increased about the value of unlicensed spectrum. like the commissioners referenced, when you walk the floor of ces as i did last week, you realize there are just a myriad of connected devices. but even when you talk to the representatives of these companies about how these devices connect, how different connections occur on licensed versus unlicensed networks, there's really not so much of a distinction drawn. and rightfully so. we just want this stuff to work.

unfortunately, we do have to roll up our sleeves a little bit, though, and understand that for all of this stuff to work, we need an effective spectrum policy. we to, as commissioner rosenworcel mentioned, put on -- wave our nerd flag a little bit and understand that there are different approaches to connectivity that occur from a licensed and unlicensed. so, wififorward started by trying to understand how much benefit we and the economy have seen from unlicensed spectrum. we've heard a number of citations here today. we think it's over $200 billion a year. and we think that it will grow to over $500 billion a year as early as 2017. moreover, we think that these unlicensed technologies, technologies including wi-fi, but not exclusive to wi-fi, zigby, z-way, blue tooth.

rfid. these are on-ramps for invited divide. they constitute the basic connectivity that is required for the so-called internet of games that so many of us are hearing about. and they also, of course -- i forgot this one because i worked on this issue very closely, they also provide a very important element in our education world. wi-fi is basically connectivity in schools and as we're spending more and more time recognizing that connectivity and education doesn't just end with the school day. wi-fi and technology used

unlicensed spectrum are going to be critical to address the so-called homework gap which is obviously critical. we've also heard that wi-fi is an incredible success story. we've got 60% to 70% of all mobile internet traffic carried over wi-fi networks. i'm often surprised to hear that survey suggests that a majority of younger americans would rather give up coffee than give up wi-fi. i saw a number of shirts saying no buffering, as if it's a model no buffering, as if it's a motto of life. and the things that commissioner rosenworcel once referenced to as junk bands are now referred to as innovation bands. so the success is there. it will continue to grow. cisco predicts we'll have 20 billion by 2020.

and the band, the 2.4 gigahertz band, is congested. i had the chance to interview the wi-fi provider at ces, cox business networks. they have provided wi-fi to ces for three years. when they took over that opportunity, there were 166 access points that provided enough connectivity for the exhibiters of ces. now, they have 2,200 access points in just two -- three short years. interestingly, when you speak to their network engineers, they talk about the number of connected devices exploding, not necessarily in the ces context of the throughpoint demands exploding. their metric, and this is once

again flying the nerd flag is to talk about duty cycling. that's how we can measure how full these bands are. and throughout ces, the 2.4 gigahertz bands were over 90% duty cycled. nearly 100% of the users that used the cox wi-fi network had the opportunity to use 2.4 or 2.5, almost 100%. the device chose 5. suggesting 2.4 was just not a viable network for most people. so, with the cisco and others, the cisco and others predicting that we'll have this explosion of connectivity devices, obviously ces is a very unique use case. but you can imagine that those kinds of experiences will come more frequent.

i'll close by saying that the reason 5.9 is so important for the members of wififorward are really pretty straightforward. and we've heard reference to them, but i'll just specify them here. it's 75 megahertz. that's a lot of spectrum. even if the whole amount is not available for sharing and for wi-fi commercial uses, there's still seems just to be a real opportunity. incumbent user base has not yet been established in the band. that's an important consideration, we believe. the facts, as michael referenced it to 802-11p a cousin of 802-11 ac means there are some engineering efficiencies that occur that make sharing in that band readily and seems well suited, worth studying.

and of course, we're hearing that within the 5 gigahertz band itself that is the band in which this gigabit wi-fi standards was designed for and can operate. we don't currently have a contiguous 160 megahertz channel. there are advantages to having a 160 megahertz channel. these wide channels as michael referenced have value. and this is an opportunity. so, we, wififorward support calls on the fcc to develop spectrum sharing protocols and agreements to protect safety of life crash avoidance operations and enable commercial uses in the band. with that, i'll thank you all for your attention. >> thank you, bill. and now, we'll hear from harold

feld from public knowledge. >> thank you. i will not join the sweetness and light that we've been hearing so far. let me start with three things happened in 1999 that were important for the development of spectrum. the ieee approved the 802.11 protocols that allowed for wi-fi. satellite radio rules were finalized. so we could launch a satellite service. and we allocated all of this spectrum away from unlicensed which is where it had been allocated two years earlier. and it gave it to the auto industry for dsrc. which of these three can you not find in your car? answer -- dsrc. you can get satellite radio in your car. you can even get wi-fi in your car. you can get cellular service in your car. the one thing you can't get is the one thing that was actually

entrusted to the auto industry to do to save lives. dsrc. it turns out no shocker, the auto industry is lousy at developing wireless technology. that's not a bad thing. it's not a problem for them, they don't carve. what do they know about this stuff? on the other hand, there are a lot of people who seem to be a lot better about building this stuff. i mean, is it really that the frequencies operate differently in europe that for some reason you need all of this space here for american dsrc? has our obesity problem spread to dsrc? or are europeans smarter than us when it comes to manipulating this? or can we deal with a much more allocation for the life and safety issue? the tech industry, everybody talks about ces and what's going on there in self-driving cars, folks like google had to do this

on unlicensed. 911 is getting into unlicensed for beaconing for next generation 911. so, we are putting life and safety issues on wi-fi with people who do this a lot better than the car industry. bluntly, spectrum squatting in this band in the car industry kills. we talk about how many people might be saved in some happy day years down the road, 20 years down the road at a guess, when these systems are broadly deployed. i want to know how many people have died until today because the car industry is squatting on spectrum that could be used for life and safety in automobiles. not to mention life and safety in other aspect of the economy as well. the additional problem here

bluntly is, is this really about life and safety? bluntly, i live in a place where a lot of deer are running around. my car's lidar or my car's unlicensed radar can do this stuff when a deer crosses the path. unless we are planning to track down every moose, deer, caribou or anything else that crosses a road, dsrc not going to help. what will help are all of these other technologies that, frankly, are already available that could be deployed if there were more availability of spectrum and if the auto industry were not squatting on their own spectrum in the hopes of somehow generating this. but here's my real concern because i'm a washington cynic, which is most life and safety systems, things that are aloe systems, things that are allocated basically for life and safety systems are run on a noncommercial basis. we do 911 and nina and all of the actual public safety responders, they're noncommercial.

when we allocate public safety spectrum for the police, for the fire department, it's noncommercial. is this allocation noncommercial? why, no, it's not. the auto industry, which could do with a much smaller allocation for the purely life and safety standard is holding on to a whole bunch of spectrum for something else. and i'm cynical enough to wonder if that something else is a revenue generator. i'm cynical enough to wonder if the prospect of using this to generate revenue is such a distraction to them they've been wading around potential standards for 20 years even if they come up with something that's good for life and safety, it might interfere with the revenue model. so, i would suggest, instead, we take a look at what's going on. the auto industry has consistently dragged its feet.

at every opportunity. i have been doing this at the fcc for a long time. i've done it from the unlicensed side and the licensed side. i know how the spectrum interference games get played. i know that there is no such thing as a pristine and pure background, you know, against which these systems operate particularly you're driving big honking pieces of metal which when last i checked moving big pieces of metal generate rf interference fields, but we are in an environment where you have to ask when these guys are so afraid of testing, when they have played rope-a-dope with the fcc which has acted in good faith to try to do joint testing, these guys have stretched this out, stretched this out and, oh, look, the administration is almost over. does anybody here in d.c. where us cynics live really expect them to cooperate with the testing going forward or do we think that it is much more likely that they're going to continue to find excuses, drag their feet, delay, delay, delay, and hope that they will continue to be given the opportunity to squat on their spectrum no matter how many people die.

so, i've challenged the fcc not simply to refresh the record, but to have a deadline. as a legal matter, never mind the policy, never mind the political realities, the fact is as a legal matter the fcc holds the cards here. this is not primary use by the federal government. this is an allocation for a service which has sat on its butt and wasted its time, it is actively blocking the development of life and safety systems that could be saving millions of lives and some untold number of deer and caribou. we need to have the fcc set a deadline where it says, okay, we're going to do testing, but do you know what, if the testing is not completed by a date certain, we will assume that we can reallocate your supposed life and safety systems up to the top where other countries with smarter engineers and slimmer, fitter, dsrc systems manage to use it, and we'll open

up the rest. that's the only way we're going to move this thing forward, and bluntly, that is the way to start saving lives. [ applause ] >> thank you, harold. and i suspect blair anderson might have a few things to respond to in his five minutes. >> hello, everybody, thank you very much. we don't normally get to speak to a group like this. it's a pleasure to be here. kind of have the shackles of being a federal employee, so i don't think i can be quite as colorful as harold. it's an opportunity for us to talk about how nhtsa kind of views this environment so i wanted to start from the very beginning. mary kind of touched on some of this. but our interest in both vehicle-to-vehicle technologies but also automation kind of stems from the fact that in

2014 32,672 lives were lost on our highways. we're very specific about that. that was the exact number of people who lost their lives on the highways in the u.s. kind of a few interesting points that kind of go along with that to add a little more flavor to it. of that and why we're so bullish on these innovations that are taking place, of those lives that were lost, 94% of them, if you took the real and you walked it back, 94% of those accidents resulted in fatalities, there's a human error that led to the accident. so, these technologies as we move forward provide an opportunity to try and deal with, address and hopefully short-circuit. i think somebody earlier mentioned how we're kind of in a dynamic -- dynamic place in the car industry. for so long we focus on how do

you make this car safer when it crashes, you put air bags in it, you put seat belts in it. you make the frame stronger or have them crumple in a way that is -- will put the occupants in a safer position. as we move forward, we're realizing that's good. that's gotten us a long way over the history. but the next -- kind of the future for the car industry is how do you avoid these crashes. a crash that doesn't happen is obviously a lot safer than a crash that does happen. so, 94% of them are caused by human error. also looking forward to 2015, we've kind of hit -- hopefully it's not a plateau, but looking at 2015, the number of lives, kind of the preliminary estimates for the first half of the year our fatalities have gone up 8%. and that's not just a -- that's not just a fact that comes with increased vehicle miles traveled. there's something more going on there, so potentially we've kind of hit a plateau.

one other kind of stat i wanted to mention is if you look at the age ranges from 8-year-olds to 24-year-olds, kind of that demographic group, motor vehicle crashes is the largest -- is the leading cause of death within those age ranges. basically until you get to the age where you start having health problems, motor vehicles is one of the leading areas where you have a chance of dying. so, that is -- that is essentially why we come at this, why we're so excited about this. vehicle-to-vehicle, i mentioned at the very beginning i think there's been a lot of talk about both automation and vehicle-to-vehicle technologies. for us we don't look at it as an either/or. it's and/both. both/and. they're not mutually exclusive technologies. they complement each other. vehicle-to-vehicle, the communication that you could

have with a dsrc complements a lot of the technologies that are being developed on the automated self-driving front. they shouldn't be looked at as competing technologies. they shouldn't be looked at one as both doing the exact same thing. they both complement each other and will work to further the safety benefits. another area i wanted to talk about was i kind of start by laying out why at nhtsa and d.o.t. we're so excited and spend so much attention talking about this. kind of another theme throughout today has been kind of the history of the last 15 years and also where are we going from now. there's been a lot of talk about it being 20, 30 years out. i think we would contend it's happened a lot faster than most people think, that it's not a when, it's that it's actually happening now. if you look at the secretary yesterday, there is some -- there is some -- we didn't do

official announcement, but there was some press that the vehicle-to-vehicle rule making has been accelerated. the administration and in particularly secretary fox have been very vocal over the past year, and as of yesterday, the draft nprm has been moved over to omb. so, we accelerated that, we're moving it through the review process because this administration is very keen to accelerate the innovation that could take place in that arena. also ces, i think everybody has mentioned ces here. it is clearly a playground of innovation. there's all kinds of exciting fun little doodads that you can see there. if you walk the floor you can very clearly see there are dozens, many, many people working on automation. they're working on mobility, connection. but they're also working on dsrc. i'll throw out there delphi, for instance, is one example.

they released a aftermarket dsrc at ces this year. i think that will have tremendous potential for increasing this timeline of which we see the deployment of this technology. i also wanted to mention gm. i think we said 2017 a couple times, that that's the first time we're going to see it in cars. 2017. it's 2016 already. that's this year, if you think about when the model cars come out. gm is planning to have dsrc in cars in showrooms this year, by the end of the year, so we're moving forward on that. overall, as i've said, we're very bullish. if you look at vehicle-to-vehicle technology from all the research that has taken place, there are a lot of opportunities.

if you take just a couple applications and kind of the number of applications and the innovation that could take place are obviously infinite. but if you take two simple applications, one where you take a left turn through an intersection and the other where you're just going through an intersection and use dsrc to understand if there are cars who are coming through who are either not stopping at the light, who aren't stopping at the stop sign, those alone, those two applications are enough to pay for the cost/benefit of putting the technology in cars. so, it's not going to be a high hurdle to make these things cost effective to get benefits out of them. i hope as we have seen from a lot of what was at ces with announcements from gm moving forward, that the timeline for this is actually -- it's here. like, it's here now. this is not something that we're going to wait 20 years for. this spectrum is not going to be underutilized for the next 30 years.

it's going to be tapped here shortly. and the last thing i'd mention kind of in terms of what we're doing to accelerate that, we talked about the rule, but i also want to mention the department and the administration's putting a lot of effort, time and money into trying to accelerate deployment. in september we announced connected vehicle grants where we have grants to tampa bay, new york city, and wyoming to essentially deploy commercial versions of applications and demonstrate them in their cities. and then just more recently we announced the smart cities initiative. this is actually if you haven't seen it, it's a very unique grant from a government standpoint. we as the department are providing $40 million to a single midsize city to essentially do wide scale innovative connectivity program.

we're not telling them exactly what it has to be, we're not telling them how to do it and we're also working with partners to bring in outside partners to try to leverage the $40 million that the department's put forth. so far paul allen's foundation has added $10 million to assist it. mobile eye, which is a technology company that provides mapping technology and works with transit companies, has already pledged to take part in it. we continue to go out there and look for additional partners and have conversations. so, i think as you see that with the amount of money and effort that will be put in over the course of the next year into a midsize city, you could very well see a future in the next year where you have a city that is -- or midsize city that is fully deployed, fully connected that is demonstrating how this technology works, essentially proving it out and proving where the quirks are, but also what the benefits are.

so, the one -- the last thing i wanted to say, i kind of talked about why we're bullish, why we support it. what we see as the timeline. this question today about what the path forward is. michael mentioned the letter that was sent to the hill, and we do. we as a department feel very strongly about this technology, but we're open to the efficient use of it. so, we stand behind and are committed to kind of working with the fcc, with ntia to do testing, to demonstrate and see if some of these technologies and other types of technologies are capable of allowing the safety protocols, the safety messages, to function in the spectrum in a safe, reliable manner without any interference, so look forward to questions. and thank you very much. >> great. thank you, everyone. whoever said spectrum has boring

has never had a panel about connected cars and the 5.9 gigahertz band. so, i want to build on this point -- and i'll make sure we have a few minutes for questions from the audience as well. but this point that blair was sort of getting at, that maybe not unlike the unlicensed space 20 years ago, that the dsrc space just needs a bit more time to sort of come of age and that we should give it the space to do so from a spectrum allocation standpoint. do others agree with that, with that point? and if so, how do you balance the interest of innovation for the auto industry in dsrc with the need for space to innovate on wireless unlicensed spectrum as well as the interests of protecting safety in this space? >> spectrum squatting hill, that's a real problem here.

that limits my patience where in the name of life and safety we're going to hold up an entire band from other life and safety uses or refuse to use technology that other apparently smarter engineers in other countries have developed along this and lay claim to this whole swath of spectrum. the qualcomm guys are pretty smart, usually we're fighting, but i agree, they're pretty smart. and in this case they've said, yeah, do you know what, we can split this up and do this just like they do in europe. in fact, we can -- because americans have apparently an obesity problem, we can even give you another ten megahertz. so, i don't see why we can't give time for this technology to develop, for all of this to happen, by putting the life and safety things at the upper end of the band. letting that technology go forward. and still improve life and safety systems that are being developed by other people by expanding the ability of unlicensed use.

win/win. so, my question really is what the hell kind of capacity do you need that the 30 megahertz proposed is not going to be sufficient? i mean, you can send a dvt signal on what, two megahertz capacity, it's not like you are downloading medical files for after the accident. you are talking about, look, there's a deer, boom! >> do others have thoughts? otherwise i have a follow-up. >> that's hard to follow. >> well, then, maybe for mary and blair specifically, is there -- you know, getting down to the next steps or the proposals that we talked about here, is there a reason even if we might debate the size of the bands themselves there's a reason why the commission shouldn't separate a band for this real time -- these real time safety applications and create another band for other nonsafety applications and unlicensed? >> the issue in terms of how

cisco looks at it is really one around the development of the dsrc ecosystem, which we see as essentially formed and ready to go into the market, and we see the announcements by gm. we ourselves have announced a vehicle-to-infrastructure solution product about a year ago. there are dozens of dsrc manufacturers who are out there, and they have their own trade shows where they show up in great numbers as well. so, we see this as sort of an almost fully formed, starting to commercialize ecosystem. we are skeptical that someone's going to pull the rug out from under that and require a rechannelization of the band. it may be that someone at the fcc does that or the congress does that or somehow that decision gets made. but we're seeing no real

evidence of it. in fact, we're seeing the opposite, right? so, in the highway bill that passed last month, we see numerous references by the united states congress to vehicle-to-infrastructure technology, and specifically calling this out as something that the federal highway administration will be funding in the course of the next iteration of the highway bill. so, if anything, we're seeing the acceleration of the existing dsrc into the market. now, as i said, i don't have a technology religion and we could be completely wrong about this. but where is the evidence that this is going to take place, that this transformation in the band is going to take place? >> i think mary put it very well. the one thing i would add to that is clearly there's been a lot of time and effort that's

been put into this by d.o.t., by a number of research arms, to get this to a place where we are starting kind of the leading edges of commercialization of the project -- or the product. there's been a lot of effort and money invested on the private sector side to create these products to move forward. if it was to be rechannelled essentially a lot of that work would have to be restarted. i don't -- i wouldn't say that it will take ten years at least i hope not, but it will still be a significant delay in the safety benefits of it will be delayed during that time, some of the commercial benefits that a lot of these companies are banking on will be delayed. >> the other thing i want to add because i'm sure harold knows this and he's just forgotten it. in europe the use cases there for transportation are somewhat different than how we've decided

to use its. so, they do not have a vehicle-to-vehicle technology deployed in the -- in the slimmed-down band that they use. they use it for other things such as road tolling and other stuff, but they don't have the v-to-v use. the v-to-v safety to life use is red, white and blue usa. >> the only thing i want to just inject there is in terms of significant delay or not is, you know, the party that would bear the greatest inconvenience over putting the dsrc safety channel at the top of the band instead of the bottom of the band is qualcomm. we're the ones that make the chips. we've got to design the radios to work on the right frequency. we don't think it's a significant delay, and as i said when i spoke, the last thing that we want for many reasons including many of those that harold has said, the last thing we would want is anything that would, you know, significantly

delay dsrc. we have our own private sector investment in dsrc. so, honestly, you know, the way we work in designing chips, you know, yes, there would have to be some testing to make sure that there isn't any significant between the bottom of the band to the top of the band. but we really don't think that this is an issue of significant delay. if it was, we wouldn't be advocating this. and i've been saying that since 2013. so, you know, february of 2013 is when the nprm was issued and since then i've been consistently saying there isn't a significant delay and if there was, we wouldn't have this proposal. >> all right. i promised questions from the audience. we're running low, if not overtime. we'll start in the back, right next to you. >> hi, chris mccabe. i think all of us have been through this. mary is looking at me and laughing. how do we get past the rhetoric

of people are going to die? harold, you don't want to kill any moose or any deer and no one wants anyone else to die as a result of this in a car accident. so, let's assume that everyone agrees in this debate and discussion that no one wants people to die as a result of any policy discussions. and if we could put that to bed, which historically we did it with aws-3 as an industry. general wheeler and others said war fighters capabilities would be harmed. we would lose people on the battlefields if we did, you know, if we evolved some of those bands into commercial use. after several years of debate and discussion, ultimately i think everyone agreed that there was a way to evolve some of those bands without really harming anyone. and i think the country's better off as a result. huge auction. lot of money to the federal government. and a lot of movement in spectrum from light use to robust commercial use. i think we have that here.

and if we could have everyone agree -- i'm sure the six of you all agree that however this plays out, we don't want people to die as a result of a policy discussion, right? is that fair for everyone up there? yeah, bill. bill says yes. i'll take everyone else as a yes. so, blair, my question to you is, can you help this process and make sure that going forward nhtsa and some of the federal government entities that we stop the rhetoric about deaths and dying and we focus on the assumption that everyone agrees that we don't want people to die as a result. the question then is, with that as a baseline, can we move forward with investigating how to share these bands whether it's the qualcomm approach, the cisco approach? but the rhetoric keeps driving us back so that we do nothing and i think nobody wants anyone to die. so can we enlist your help in driving the federal government forward and stop the rhetoric about deaths and the focus being on we're going to protect

everyone we can protect, but can we do it with using less spectrum? >> i think we at nhtsa, we at d.o.t., we've said before and i said toward the end of my remarks, we are happy to work at how do you do the testing. obviously we're always going to talk about safety. that's our mission. that's what we care about. lives on the highway, that's essentially what our entire game is about and trying to reduce that. so, getting away from mentioning that is always in the back of our mind. but we are, i think to your point, committed to working with the fcc. we're committed to working with ntia to look at and see if sharing can happen in this band. we are -- we're open to that. i think there is a test pan that we've been working on internally to figure out how you test these devices.

our hesitation is on kind of backing away at this time when there's a lot of innovation taking place. and it's really just starting to blossom and explode. constraining the amount of spectrum that there is for folks to innovate in. >> i think we're overtime. and so i hope that as many panelists as possible can stay afterwards and answer questions individually, but i think we will end it on that. there are a couple of live events to tell you about coming up today. on c-span, it's a discussion on the persian gulf region, in particular recent tensions between iran, saudi arabia and other nations in the region. that's at noon eastern. also at noon on c-span2, the

congressional internet caucus hosts a discussion on issues facing consumer freedom of expression online. the tactics businesses use to silence critical reviews of businesses. that's at noon eastern on c-span2. featured this weekend on american history tv on c-span3, saturday night at 8:00 eastern, on lectures in history, arizona state university professor brook simpson on the president's wartime role, includie ining wa waged without congressional declaration. >> it's the president's job to educate, to explain, to educate. the president will say i know you don't understand this. it's really not any reason you should have understood this. it was in a place far, far away with people who speak a different language. and so i'm going to explain to you what american interests are.

people in congress respond to that. i will let opinion makers respond to that. members of my administration -- i'm going to educate you. and you can help make a decision. i'm going to ask you to do this. i'm going to explain to you why i think this is a course of action to pursue. >> sunday morning at 10:00 on road to the white house rewind, the 1996 campaign of former republican tennessee governor lamar alexander and his walk across new hampshire to greet voters. and later at 4:00 p.m. eastern on real america, a 1963 interview with reverend martin luther king junior on his non-violent approach to civil rights, his comments on president kennedy's civil rights bill. >> some years ago when i first studied the ghandi philosophy, i came to the conclusion it was the most potent weapon available

to oppress people in this struggle for freedom and human dignity. and i would say that this overall direct action movement with its sit-ins and stand-ins, kneel-ins, its mass marches and pilgrim aages and all of the otr elements that enter the struggle have been patterned a great deal after ghandi. monday is martin luther king junior day. with congress not in session, we have featured programs on all three-span networks. at 11:0 a.m., live coverage of the british house of xhan comm debate on whether to ban donald trump from their country. that is expected to last three years. on c-span2's book tv, at 6:30 p.m. eastern, william p. jones

and his book "the march on washington" jobs, freedom and forgotten history of civil rights. >> when a. phillip randolph went to reorganize this march he had called off, everybody said, you better get martin luther king. you need to get his support. he went to martin luther king. martin luther king said, i will support you but let's expand the goals of the march. the march is not just about winning equal access to jobs, fighting employment discrimination. it's also about winning the right to vote in the south. >> at 8:30, john lewis recalls his involvement in the civil rights movement in his book "march, book two, the second part of an illustrated adaptation of his life." on american history tv on c-span3, at 2:00, international history professor at the london school of economics and political science on a iran's cold war partnership with the united states. >> iran had to look to a third power to preserve its

independence and sovereignty against britain and russia. in the 1930s, iran looked to germany to play that role. after the second world war, a generation of iranian statesmen looked to the united states as a country who had no imperial ambitions and no history of colonialism in the region. >> at 8:00 on reel america, a 1963 interview with the reverend dr. martin luther king junior on his non-violent approach to civil rights, his comments on president kennedy's civil rights bill and how ghandi influenced him. four former defense secretaries talk about their lessons learned on the relationship between u.s. and china and the fur of ture of th relationship.

i'm thrilled to welcome you all to the first special program of the national committees 50th anniversary. we have been fostering exchanges and informed discussion. today's program is the first in a series of seven programs throughout the next year. in two months, we will gather the former secretaries of the treasury and two months later the former secretaries of

commerce and united states trade representatives, including our chair carla hills who is here with us today. later in the year, we will gather national security advisers and then american businessjd]g leaders who have bd trails in china. our final program this year will gather former secretaries of state. and next year we will hold a similar program in china with many chinese leaders some of whom are alumni of our programs. to begin the celebrations today, i am joined by former -- four former secretary of defense who also happened to be four great americans. all four of them have served our country above and beyond the ]p call of duty.

and have contributed to peace in this world in ways too numerous to enumerate. if i began to list their accomplishments, i would have no time for questions or discussions. so let me go right to so let me go right to questions. i will start with dr. harold brown, secretary from 1977 to '81. then go to william perry, who was secretary from 1994 to '97. bill, can you hear us? >> i can. >> we couldn't hear your response. >> i can hear you fine. >> terrific. >> then, we'll go to senator william cohen, secretary from '97-2001. and finally, to senator chuck hagel, who was secretary from 2013 to less than a year ago. i and the american people cannot

thank all of you enough for your service to our country. and i am honored to be here with you today. secretary brown, you were secretary when we established diplomatic relations with china and i was a young lawyer, at the chinese are fond of saying small potato in the state department. tell us about the relationship with china in those early days when you were secretary and dealings you had with the chinese. >> the situation then between the u.s. and china were very different from what they are now or were for the tenures of the others as secretary of defense who will be speaking here today. the chinese were then very much worried about soviet possible

attack on china. and looked to the u.s. as an offset, essentially, and as a way of ensuring chinese security. moreover, they were very far from their present military capabilities. and that's quite different from the situation not only today but during the tenure of the others here. bill perry was in a somewhat different position because he was my undersecretary at that time and, in fact, went to china as a way of exploring some cooperation in terms of research and development, and even perhaps -- well it didn't happen until quite a bit later -- even some transfers. so that's a very different

situation from the present. i've watched and, to some degree participated, in the somewhat evolution of the strategic relationship of the military-to-military relationship. and i must says that it's become, at first, a cautious relationship. and now has turned into a peculiar combination of interdependence and disagreement and, in fact, controversy, and even -- it wasn't approached enmity yet, but it could get there. that's, i think, to some degree, limited by the mutual dependence

of the two economies. and i know i'll offend bill perry by saying this, but it's almost limited by the possession of nuclear weapons on both sides in the devil's bargain that is mutual deterrence. that is to say, the sides are greatly inhibited from armed conflict by the possibility it would escalate to nuclear war. but of course, if it happens, it is an unimaginable catastrophe. maybe there's an intermediate step that is created by cyber warfare. but, in any event, that's going to be a big worry. the relationship is very different, both in nature and relative position of the two sides from the way it was when i was secretary of defense and

when i first visited china and saw military display that largely consisted of troops mounted on bicycles. >> secretary perry, it was about 13 years later that you then became secretary of defense. talk about the relationship with china then, obviously you experienced quite a dust-up, so to speak, of the taiwan issue at that point. >> well, it's time that bill clinton was a candidate and running for president. he took a very negative position on china. and as a consequence of that, when we came in office we had no real significant mutual relationship with them. the secretary thought that was a mistake with the president to

allow the close relationship. about a year after i became secretary, i had the opportunity with the permission of president clinton to make a significant visit to china. this was my second visit. the first one, i think, occurred at the request of secretary brown, as he mentioned. this visit was about one week in duration and it was, i would say, interesting and useful but not really extremely productive. we had a cordial relationship, not a close relationship. and then about no more than a year after that, i guess about the time that the minister of defense of china was scheduled for a return visit to the united states, we had an incident in the taiwan strait where chinese

and of course military exercise in the strait fired missiles that landed within a few tens of miles of taiwan. obviously a very provocative action that occurred about the time the taiwanese were conducting presidential elections and i think intended to intimidate the taiwan people not to vote for the candidate who was seemingly promoting independence from china. both president clinton and i believed that this violated agreement that led to the shanghai concord and we felt it was a dangerous situation. i requested, and received, permission to send two battle

groups to the taiwan strait, along with a message to china that we were -- thought their actions during the exercise were not -- we could not tolerate those and we were sending this -- sending the groups to ensure this. this had the desired effect, military exercise stopped. there were no missiles fired. but of course, it strained our relationship. i had to cancel the return visit of the chinese minister a few weeks after that. i feared this was going to be the end of our relationship with china during the clinton administration. it turned out a year after that, the last year of my term as secretary, we were able to get back on a positive track again. and indeed defense minister of china did make a return visit. it was friendly but not close.

and in terms of subsequent relations nothing was accomplished in those meetings. we were in a tenuous relationship at that time. later on in the clinton administration the relationship grew quite a bit more. for that period right after the taiwan strait incident they were very tense. >> thank you. secretary cohen, you followed right on, i guess, bill's stewardship. tell us how the relationship kind of evolved, our defense relationship evolved with china during your tenure. >> as secretary perry pointed out, a year after he left office, the situation improved. i'd like to think it was because a republican was at the defense department. but really, i owe a great deal to secretary perry.

he took a tough stand, at a time when a signal needed to be sent at the time, that we wanted to see a peaceful unification of taiwan with the mainland. and so i inherited a much better situation certainly than secretary perry had at that time. and i would like to think that my tenure during that period was -- it was closer and i think friendlier. and i had been going to china since december 1978, when i was just about to be sworn in as u.s. senator as a member of the house of representatives and delegation of four senators were sent to beijing. senator nunn, senator hart, senator glenn and myself. the three of them decided being the youngest member of the group, that i should raise the issue of human rights. [ laughter ] so that was my first experience.

and i met with the then-equivalent of defense minister at that time, and i asked what the defense budget was. the answer was, we don't have one. so it was a different china at that time than certainly my years later when i went as secretary of defense. my tenure there was positive. it was for the four years that i was there i would say very gratifying, one of the first things i tried to do was set up a hot line between the defense department and military departments in china. it didn't take place quickly. it took ten years. that was not actually instituted until 2007. but nonetheless, it was a very positive relationship then. i should say that i have a bit of a conflict of interest because i have been going to china now for many, many years, and actually i have two offices in china. one in beijing, one in tanjen.

i have made it part of my career as such to foster a better relationship between u.s. and china. but it also gives me an opportunity to meet with china's officials, and to indicate to them very frankly, usually behind closed doors, what the issues are that are important to the united states and to our relationship with china. so i would say, during my period of time there with one exception and that was the sale proposed by israel to china of a sophisticated radar system. i was very much opposed to it. i was able to persuade the administration that it was worth opposing. president clinton agreed, and the sale didn't go through. but i must say, it did not make the chinese government very happy with that. it was a deal they thought they had concluded and felt that i had intervened in a very

negative way. other than that one incident, i would say the relationship was very positive and since that time it has remained so. >> secretary hagel? very recent, obviously, post pivot, post rebalance. tell us about the relationship that you had as secretary with the chinese and the experiences that you had with them. >> steve, just as my three predecessors have noted, each of us inherit a different situation. i had a different time in the relationship. and as i was listening, as i always do to my elders, on this, i will start here because i think the three of them have developed a pretty good base to work from. from the time bill cohen left

office until i came to office, it was about a dozen years. and in that intervening 12 years, as everyone here knows, a tremendous amount occurred in china, start with the development, economic development. and with that came an expectation, i think, of a pushing out in their defense capabilities, as in, i think we've seen clearly all of their capabilities, technological capacity. and so when i became secretary of defense, i think relations were very much on the upside. now, there were some issues during the two years that i was secretary of defense, which i will mention in a moment, but i think generally what i inherited as secretary of defense was very good, very positive. that was a result, i think, of something harold brown said.

we all know the common interests of our two nations that was prosperity, peace, stability, security. it was in our interests, it was in china's interests, clearly. i also think it's important our uniformed military get a lot of credit. admiral locklear is here. those who served -- admiral pruher's here -- those who served in the military, particularly the navy, who had responsibility for a specific command, did a tremendous amount in those 12 years in particular because they had more opportunities, i think, than military leaders did during my three predecessors' time to build those military-to-military relationships. and two admirals here with us tonight did really tremendous work as well as their

colleagues. so i was fortunate when i became secretary, in particular, with what already had been built and was building out and what i thought was exactly the right thing at the right time and the vision of president obama to make very clear a defined, pronounced rebalancing of our interests. and i used to say in the six long asia pacific trips i took -- as you know every trip you take is long to the pacific or anywhere in asia -- that the rebalance, what was not to crowd out china or to contain china or to in any way afflict any damage economic, security damage to china, but was to engage china as well as all of the nations in the pacific, and asia, we all know that the united states has

been a pacific power for more than a century. clearly a pacific power. in fact the entire western hemisphere, north to south, borders the pacific. our interests are very clear. china's interests are very clear. now, how we managed through those differences, like the east china sea, south china sea issue, which really developed and came to a head during the time i was there, i think, are the more defined critical examples of managing through a very difficult set of circumstances. and i think, too, what we've seen in the markets -- and i know you are probably going to get to some of this, so i'll hold any particular comments on this -- the reflexion of what's happened in china's markets the last week and how that has reflected on everyone's markets consequences, reactions, and i

think that should -- if we needed any other reminder -- should clearly remind us, again, of something my predecessors have all mentioned the inner connectedness of our interests and china's interests and all of the nations of asia pacific. so to sum it up, my time at the defense department was a time of really more, i think, continued engagement as our military-to-military leaders have done, as i did in the six trips i took. in fact, i took those at my initiative to do more and more of that, develop partnerships, relationships. and also, a time of more and more -- i wouldn't say conflict. i would say difference -- differences that i think are going to continue to grow out, as china expands, their economic

growth which they have been on this rocket ship the last 20 years have not been able to be sustained. cannot be sustained. but we surely want to stable china and secure china and it's in our interests. all of that was bubbling at the time i was there. but overall, i think it was a time of management of the relationship. >> just a short follow-up, before i go on to my next question, which is, the rebalance is designed to engage the chinese, is designed to strengthen our alliances with our traditional allies. there's virtually no chinese who believes that, that any time you speak with the chinese they say it's directed against china, it has kind of allowed the philippines and vietnam to poke the chinese eyes because they

know americans are strengthening their alliances and we're selling coast guard ships to vietnamese to kind of confront the chinese in their near shores. so why do you think the chinese universally don't believe what we're saying? let me first ask chuck, then i'll ask dr. brown. >> well, i concur with your premise that chinese, these leadership -- i suspect represents most of the people -- have that feeling about the rebalance. we're going to have to work through that for obvious reasons. but i'm not particularly surprised by that. i am no china expert, no asia pacific expert. but i recall the first -- my first visit to china as a businessman in 1984.

and what china was then, and i was all over the country, five different cities, in those days there was only one flight a week from new york, jfk, into beijing. we landed there on january 1st, 1984, and got off the plane, only plane on the tarmac, walked inside, being escorted by mao-suited submachine gun carrying greeters, welcome to beijing. 32 years later, it is a different world. about you what i saw, i was in then-canton, different city, shanghai, beijing, was this great suspicion of western interests, western culture, of manipulati manipulation. and i think we've always got to remember to focus on a framework of history when dealing with countries. where did they come from? where did we come from?

now, that doesn't -- that doesn't excuse, in my opinion, some of the chinese behavior that we are seeing today. but that said, i think that that's part of the answer. i can say some other things but in the interest of time here, let me hear from my colleagues. >> dr. brown, you want to comment on this one? >> a country that for 150 years was weak and was imposed upon, naturally feels aggrieved. the chinese feel aggrieved. the united states was not prominent among the aggrievers, as a matter of fact. but we represent the aggrievers to the chinese. and of course the government of china uses this as a way of getting support, patriotic feeling.

i think a reasonable way of looking at this is to say it is not what china thinks or what u.s. thinks that should count most. what should count most is how the other countries in the region feel. and they essentially look to the u.s. as a way to avoid being dominated by china. all of this is natural. it's not very helpful. and i think, from our point of view, chinese have perhaps overused their legitimate task grievances. at the same time, i think what's happened is that the chinese have looked at the u.s. as recent stumbles, both geopolitically and economically, and concluded that, indeed, the

u.s. is a power on the decline and that they are a rising power and that dispositions in the region should reflect that change. well, i think maybe they're going to find that they are not without economic difficulties as well. and i worry that, instead of making them rethink and say, okay, it's time to negotiate as equals or as the existing power and the rising power, it may actually increase their sense of grievance. that's a big worry. but things are changing and they are going to be affected by the fact that the u.s. is recovering and china may be in some difficulties.

>> may i add one point to harold's point? the united states of america has seven treaty obligations in the world. five of those seven are in the asia pacific area. so we've had those treaty obligations for a long time. a long, long time. >> secretary cohen? >> if i can follow-up on secretary brown's answer. i think we have to be concerned what china thinks. we are up to, and also be concerned about what the asian countries believe is necessary. china is number one trading partner replacing the united states, we're number four. to say the u.s. is trying to contain china would be to sea all of the members of asean are trying to contain china, which is not the case. they want to continue to do business with china. that's their primary source of exchange now. but they don't want to be dominated, as secretary brown said. and that is a reason why this

strategy on the part of the united states makes sense in the sense of how it's being pursued. to say we have 2500 marines in darwin, australia, is not a containment strategy against china although the marines think so. to say we're going to rotate four combat ships through singapore is not exactly a change in the balance of power. as you look at steps that have been taken, they've been pretty modest. but they've also sent a signal to say we understand china's power is rising, it's inevitable. this is something talked about years ago saying the fourth reform would be that of the military. it's inevitable. it's going to get bigger and stronger. what the united states is saying with our allies in the seven treaty relationships we have, yes, china's going to be a power

in the region and beyond, but we want that power to be exercised consistent with international norms. so these steps that are taken shouldn't be seen by the chinese, notwithstanding their feelings, this is a containment strategy. but rather saying, use your power in a way that benefits all of us. use the power in a way that does contain the prosperity that's been generated. and when i first was in the pentagon i had to go to their national academy of sciences and speak to young officers coming up, there were papers saying time for asia to take care of asians and for the united states to get out. i asked the question, do you really want that to take place? if we were to get out now, who replaces us? is it going to be you? is it going to be japan? is it going to be india? who replaces a stabilizing force we have been and will continue to be? we have to persuade them we're taking modest steps to make sure their power is fully integrated

into the international regime and not seen as the united states trying to in any way to proscribe, constrict, inhibit their growth, which is inevitable. >> bill perry, anything no add. >> i would associate with with what my colleagues have said on the issue. we have had almost 50 years of peace in the asia pacific region which is historically unusual. and that 50 years of peace, two comments. first of all a key contributor to that has ben the american military force in the region. secondly, that 50 years of

peace has more than anything, china to have economic growth. so in a way which may seem insane to the chinese, the american military presence in the region has been indispensable to them achieving this remarkable economic growth. some chinese sense that. few chinese are willing to say out loud their economic well-being has been a direct function of america's military presence. i think you can say it sort of pox americana in the asia pacific region in the last few decades. >> fair to conclude from the comments you think the existing architecture with the five alliances in asia, is something which should survive for the next few decades? >> chinese will not like it. >> exactly. that was going to be my point. and i think they believe that we're pushing the envelope. i believe, during each of you opined, for instance, when you

were secretary on article v of the mutual defense treaty with japan, applying to japan's administration of the islands and secretary's defense opined and the chinese say we never had a president who opined on that. now the president goes to japan and opines on that. when you were secretaries, the philippines and the vietnamese built stuff on islands in the south china sea. we didn't make a big deal of it. but now that the chinese are doing it, it's a big deal. so one can understand where kind of their views are coming from. >> well, from their point of view, that's a reasonable argument to make. on the other hand, what they are doing is completely disproportionate to what the others did.

the others didn't build islands and then put elaborate construction on them and start flying airplanes into them. the chinese would say, well, that's them. we're different and bigger and we were always in charge there. >> there's also the point of the world order that the united states helped build and led during that ten-year period after world war ii. and that world order was all about coalitions of common interests that established international law. and what the chinese are doing here is they refuse to acknowledge international law to resolve these disputes international bodies that were set up to do this. and that's another dimension of this. that i think very important because if we see a world that

now starts to unravel international law, then where are we going? the world has done pretty well the last 70 years, no world war iii, no nuclear exchange, conflict, problem, disasters, yes. but when you consider that over a 30-year period we had the two most horrible wars in the world and we've had nothing like that because of this world order, it's imperfect,it needs to be adjusted and adapted to a rising china and all of the other issues. but when you start disregarding international law, then we're running into some real difficulty. i think, in my opinion, the real issue here is much as anything else on these disputes and east and south china seas. >> of course the chinese can say, well, we weren't part of the making of those laws. and i think that's a reasonable

point to which we could invite them to help us and the rest of the world bring them up to date. i'm not clear that that's happened. up to date. i'm not clear that that's happened. >> well, that too. but i also would say, the chinese took a seat on u.n. security council a long, long time ago and did have a role in helping build a world order that was much to their benefit. which all three of you have noted that -- bill perry talked about it. the u.s. military helped the chinese in this regard. >> if you could talk about north korea during your tenure, what lessons you learned and what you would tell ash carter about --

or i guess president obama. it's not fair to pin that on ash, what we should be doing about north korea today. >> i think bill perry should answer that question. >> i think, bill, you won on this one. >> we won -- in my first year as secretary, we came close to a military conflict with north korea. that was resolved within the framework. but that framework was terminated early in the administration of george w. bush. and there has been nothing constraining since then. i think it was a mistake to give that up.

but that's history now. the -- we have two, three administrations now that have said they will not tolerate nuclear weapons in north korea and then proceeded to tolerate them. and we are now faced with a sizable -- a modest and dangerous nuclear arsenal in north korea. i think the mechanism being used to deal with this is called the six-party talks, which in my judgments have been spectacular unsuccessful. not based on any subject or judgment of what they are doing based on what the results have been. so the situation is very dangerous i think in north korea today. not only building a nuclear

arsenal, making it bigger and stronger and farther reaching but making very aggressive comments -- in fact, outrageous comments about how they might use this nuclear arsenal. i think it is urgent that we get a serious diplomatic effort to try to deal with that problem. and a six-party talk might be the might mechanism to do this but they have not had the right strategy. primarily because the united states and china have had a different assessment of the threat and therefore they don't agree on what to do about the threat. perhaps in this latest development in north korea, the chinese may now come to believe, as we do, this is a serious problem that needs serious action. i would think our next step in the united states would be to try to formulate a program on

which they base negotiations and try to get agreements with the chinese and other members of the six-party talks to get agreement on that, on those goals, that strategy, and proceed forward. the best basis i can think of for our negotiating strategy for north korea now is what the laboratory has called the three nos. no new nuclear weapons, no more nuclear weapons, and no transfer of nuclear weapons. that's not the same as what north korea gave up in its nuclear weapons, which is pretty heavy to try to get over. if we could agree on that negotiating strategy, we might

be able to make progress with north korea in at least containing the danger owe face now. even then we might go as far as to look at negotiations to eliminate. 15 years of complete failure in these six-party negotiations is not because we don't have the right people at the table. they are the right people. but we don't have the right strategy to try to deal with north korea's problems. we need to put serious attention on this problem. because it is a danger to our proliferation problems, a danger to the asian pacific region and a danger really of nuclear conflict or a terrorist group using nuclear weapons. all of these dangers are aggravated by north korea today. i think this most recent test, the most likely objective of

that test in my judgment is a test make the nuclear weapon smaller, more compact so they can fit on a missile. even if it was not, that was not the main danger. the main danger is nuclear war head. >> i think bill perry's proposal is certainly a reasonable one as an openive for us. the question is what do the north koreans get in exchange. and that will be a difficult negotiation. moreover; the chinese, i think, will always be very reluctant to put pressure on north korea.

because if north korea collapses, for whatever reason, the prospect of an extension northward of south korean influence will worry the chinese. so it's a good proposal. but it's not clear what the quid pro quo will be. >> i agree with both secretary perry and brown. but secretary brown raises a good question. what do the north koreans get out of this? well, what have they been getting out of this? they have been engaged in nuclear extortion, nuclear blackmail. feed us, fuel us before we strike again or explode again. so one thing they have been getting is more food and fuel, certainly from the chinese and perhaps others. and so i would hope that the chinese would look at what they are subsidizing and find ways to

moderate that or modulate it in a way that sends a strong signal that they are unhappy with what north korea is doing. so i think that's something we could do or they could do. secondly, we should pursue, as bill curry just said, six-party talks or another forum and try to get a multilateral agreement on what needs to be done long-term in dealing with the north koreans. but we also should be prepared to act unilaterally. we should put a much tougher squeeze on the elite and reimpose some of the sanctions that were imposed previously. i would hope also that we would consider and had they considered having that on their territory. i know we will be concerned to the chinese.

but nonetheless this is something that is important to us and to our allies to have a defensive capability that would be able to at least knock down that kind of missile technology that they were trying to develop. and finally, i think that we should go back and insist that the inspection regime -- because what bill perry has been talking about is the danger of nuclear proliferation. north korea is one of the nuclear sources of that proliferation. working at times with iran, working at times with pakistan. they are in agreement with the united states and others, there is still a danger that north korea could still be a source of some of the testing that otherwise would take place in iran or elsewhere. so i think we should look at ways of staying in. should our shipments out of north korea that are suspect and going to various ports, we should insist our allies open

those cargos for inspection. make it mandatory. those who don't, they would face sanctions from the united states. because i don't think we can afford to have the north koreans trading in nuclear materials, not only nuclear weapons but nuclear materials themselves. because there are groups out there who are desperate to get hands on a nuclear device or nuclear materials and explode it in an american city. i know that's what the secretary has been worried about, has written about. he writes about it in a factual way. i write about it in fiction. we are both concerned that is something that would be a terrible, terrible thing in the world no matter where it take place. that a nuclear bomb has exploded in an urban area causing hundreds of thousands of deaths. it's something we need to take action.